AMD introduced its first 28nm mobile GPUs back in April with the launch of the 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M. At the same time AMD changed to a new architecture called Graphics Core Next (GCN). Now, as we near the end of 2012, AMD is starting to release details of its next round of mobile GPUs: the Radeon HD 8000M Series.

Although details are thin on the ground, AMD has confirmed the 8000M series will be second-generation GCN chips, meaning they aren’t re-badged 7000 GPUs. With that being the case we can expect them to be more power efficient as well as offering a noticeable boost in performance.

To begin with there will be four 8000M GPUs made available carrying the names 8500M, 8600M, 8700M, and 8800M. The available stream processors will range from 384 right up to 640, clocks speeds vary between 650MHz and 850MHz, and all GPUs are DirectX 11 compatible.

AMD has also confirmed the inclusion of Enduro, which scales performance based on the tasks being carried out and therefore can help cut power use. Enduro has also been improved over the previous implementation used for the 7000 GPUs. Although it’s not mentioned, I also suspect ZeroCore will be present, which allows the GPU to consume “virtually no power” when idle.

As you can see from the performance comparison below, AMD is claiming huge performance gains when you compare the new 8700M to a 7670M. If true, it could make the 8000M series GPUs popular with performance laptop manufacturers next year. According to ExtremeTech, the performance gains of the mid-range chips could be as high as 30% due to the move to a 28nm process (previous mid-range GPUs still used 40nm). The high-end chips are likely to see a smaller performance gain, but win out on efficiency over previous parts.

More details are expected to be released in January (probably during CES), with the full line up of 8000M chips revealed before Q1 is over.